COUCHBASE IS THE NOSQL DATABASE FOR MISSION-CRITICAL APPLICATIONS

Couchbase architectural advantages

Develop with agility

Time to market is critical, separating the first mover from everyone else. Developing an application today without knowing all of its needs at the outset requires a database that provides flexibility in schema and access patterns. As a document database, Couchbase empowers developers to build responsive, flexible applications at scale.

Flexible schema for continuous delivery

Fully featured SQL for JSON database

SQL extended to JSON for query and analytics, including support for JOINs

Storage, retrieval, structured querying, full-text search, real-time analytics and triggers, in the cloud or on mobile and edge devices

No hassle scale out

Application behavior unchanged on 1-node development laptop to multi-node production deployment

No manual sharding, or re-sharding

Perform at any scale

Raw speed isn’t enough. The experience of the first user must be as seamless for the millionth and beyond. Gone are the days of weekend maintenance windows. You must be available all the time, anywhere around the globe. As a distributed scale-out database, Couchbase guarantees consistent performance all day, every day, for all users.

Memory and network centric

Always-on, edge-to-cloud

Consistent performance at any scale

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Memory and network centric

Memory-first architecture with integrated document cache

Network-centric architecture with a high-performance replication backbone allows new workloads to be easily added while maintaining performance at scale

Always-on, edge-to-cloud

Architected as a scale-out distributed database across physical, virtualized, container, and public cloud environments

Consistent performance at any scale

Multi-Dimensional Scaling enables workloads to be added quickly and scaled independently with no impact on the existing performance

Manage with ease

Distributed databases are hard. Couchbase makes it easy. A single platform integrates storage, access, transport, and enterprise-grade security on premises and across multiple clouds and mobile devices. Administration and maintenance is abstracted from the application behavior: scale out, in, or up; replicate around the globe; upgrade versions; and recover from failures with zero downtime or application changes.

All functionality available across physical, virtualized, public cloud, container, and Couchbase Managed Service environments

Full stack security

End-to-end encryption over the wire and at rest

Role-based authentication, with support for LDAP, PAM, and X.509

Data and administrative auditing

Get under the hood

Click the graphic to explore the Couchbase architecture

Memory First

Customers expect and demand fast, responsive applications. Many enterprises will add an in-memory caching product in front of their relational and NoSQL database to increase performance and throughput, and to ensure responsiveness. However, this adds operational and management complexity as well as additional cost.

Built on a memory-first architecture, Couchbase ensures that all operations occur in-memory and supports special memory-optimized data management options, including 100% memory resident indexes and data buckets. This optimizes data-access performance and throughput while also simplifying operational management and reducing costs. By achieving memory-speed data transfer between nodes in the cluster, Couchbase avoids traditional database disk I/O bottlenecks.

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The Couchbase Data Platform leverages its memory-first architecture to transfer data between nodes in the cluster at the speed of memory, thus avoiding traditional database disk I/O bottlenecks.

Elastic Scalability

As part of the core database engine, Couchbase provides an elastic Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS) architecture that supports both scale-up and scale-out approaches.

MDS allows you to separate the different data processing workloads as distinct, independently scalable services. You can independently configure and scale (up or out) the data, index, query, Full Text Search, and Analytics Services based on your data management processing requirements and application workloads. This gives you both the scalability to deliver responsive customer applications and the flexibility to adapt to new and changing workloads and application requirements.

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MDS is particularly well-suited for the cloud where compute, storage, and memory resources are typically allocated and expensed separately. MDS allows you to independently configure and scale your compute, storage, and memory resources for each service. This results in a more efficient allocation and use of resources, ultimately reducing your overall cost of operations in the cloud.

Persistence

Couchbase Server’s architecture guards against most forms of failure, and protects against data loss. Buckets can be configured for replication to create data redundancy and to allow for the failure of copies – as long as the data is available somewhere, it’s not lost. Data is also written to the disk, so in the case of a power outage or software crash, data can be retrieved from the disk during recovery. Depending on durability and performance requirements, users can configure the right durability options to meet their application needs.

Replication

Couchbase Server provides high availability for reading and writing of data through a variety of features. Couchbase provides high availability using intra-cluster replication and index replication, and disaster recovery using cross datacenter replication (XDCR).

Intra-cluster replication
Intra-cluster replication involves replicas that are placed on another node in the same cluster. In the event of failure of a single node, this ensures that data is still available on other nodes that can provide full read and write ability to the applications.

Cross datacenter replication
Using the cross datacenter replication (XDCR) capability, you can set up replication of data between clusters. XDCR helps protect against datacenter failures and also helps maintain data locality in globally distributed mission-critical applications.

Index replication
Index replication support has been added to improve high availability and manageability of indexes. Users can specify the number of replicas to create, and the system will manage the placement of the index replicas on different index nodes, server groups, and availability zones.

Eventing

Couchbase Eventing is a highly available, performant and scalable service which enables user-defined business logic to be triggered in real-time on the server when application interactions create changes in data. Eventing makes it easy to develop, deploy, debug and maintain data-driven functions from a centralized platform. Natively integrated with the Couchbase Data Platform, it requires no third party solutions to license or new dataops skills to manage.

Query

Build and evolve web, mobile, and IoT apps faster using Couchbase’s own query language, N1QL (“nickel”). N1QL combines the power and familiarity of SQL with the flexibility and agility of the JSON data model.

N1QL is a declarative query language that extends SQL for JSON data. You can query data via native framework and language integrations, a fluent and easy-to-use API, several Couchbase utilities, or available JDBC/ODBC drivers.

With N1QL you can query JSON documents without any limitations: sort, filter, transform, group, and combine data with a single query. You can combine data from multiple documents with a JOIN. And you’re not limited to the “single table” and “table per query” data models often found in other NoSQL products.

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In the Couchbase Mobile 2.0 release, N1QL has also been added to Couchbase Lite. This allows mobile application developers to leverage their existing SQL programming skills along with the flexibility of JSON.

Up-to-date data freshness via a fast memory-to-memory transfer protocol in a single platform

This allows app developers and DevOps to build intelligent applications and dashboards that surface insights to customers and business users in real time without the overhead and latency of performing separate extract, transform, load (ETL) operations.

Stemming, which provides a language-aware manner of searching (e.g., users can type "beauties" and find results for "beauty")

Scoring, which provides relevance ranking for results

Fast multipurpose indexes where a single index can support a wide range of possible text searches

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In the Couchbase Mobile 2.0 release, Full Text Search has also been added to Couchbase Lite. This allows mobile application developers to incorporate device-local FTS queries and intelligence into their mobile applications.

Indexing

An index is a data structure that provides a quick and efficient means to query and access all your data without scanning every document. Applications can query Couchbase Server in one of the following ways:

Using key-value access – Applications directly access data through the data service with document keys for fastest access

Using N1QL – Applications use SQL-like syntax with global secondary indexes or MapReduce views to speed up queries

Key Value

Customer experience depends on app performance and behavior, which in turn depends largely on database performance and throughput.

At the heart of the Couchbase Data Platform is a distributed key-value (KV) data store. It’s an extremely simple, lightning fast, schemaless data management system that stores a unique ID (key) and a piece of arbitrary information (value). The key is hashed by the Couchbase client library, automatically sharded, and directly sent to the appropriate data service node in the Couchbase cluster.

The KV store is accessed using simple create, read, update, delete (CRUD) APIs, and thus provides a simpler interface when accessing documents using their IDs (primary keys). Due to their simplicity, KV operations execute with extremely low latency, often sub-millisecond.

Applications can access data stored in the Couchbase Data Platform using a variety of interfaces, including the KV API, MapReduce views, N1QL queries, Full Text Search, and the Analytics Service. For simple CRUD operations using the primary key, the KV API is the fastest and most efficient way of accessing the data.

Your mobile and IoT apps leverage the full power of the Couchbase Data Platform by using Couchbase Server, Couchbase Sync Gateway, and Couchbase Lite to enable secure online and offline data access, as well as automatic data synchronization from device to the backend.

Big Data and SQL Integrations

Rich, immersive apps need to leverage data across the entire data management ecosystem, including SQL and big data databases and tools. Couchbase includes built-in big data and SQL integration to allow you to build intelligent apps in less time by leveraging your tools, processing capacity, and data – wherever it may reside.

Big data integration is provided via high-performance scalable connectors for Hadoop, Kafka, Spark, and Elasticsearch that leverage the latest advances and features available in these rapidly emerging technologies.

SQL integration is enabled in a couple of different ways. The JDBC and ODBC drivers by Simba and the ODBC, JDBC, ADO.NET, OData, SSIS, BizTalk, and Excel drivers by CData allow you to use any standards-compliant tool with Couchbase. Couchbase also provides instructions and connector technology for specific BI, visualization, and ETL tools, including Tableau, Qlik, SlamData, Knowi, Excel, Power BI, Looker, Informatica, Talend, TIBCO, and many others.

Unified Programming Model

Couchbase gives you simple connectors and tools and uniform application development APIs across multiple programming languages, making it easier to build applications and reducing your time to market. Are you a Mobile or IoT developer? Couchbase lets you seamlessly move data from the datacenter to the cloud and the edge.

The Couchbase SDKs provide native support for synchronous, asynchronous, and event-driven programming models in the languages that support them. A set of Server and Mobile REST APIs are also available for queries, system configuration, and administration.

Additional SDKs – including specific API implementations and SDKs for Java, PHP, Ruby, Erlang, Perl, TCL, and ColdFusion – are available from the open source community. For more information, see the open source projects from the community list.

Full-stack Security

Although security is fairly standard in the relational database world, in the NoSQL world it varies significantly from product to product.

With Couchbase, your data is secure everywhere – on the wire, on the device, in the cloud, and in the datacenter. The Couchbase Data Platform provides built-in and configurable full-stack security for authentication, authorization, encryption over the wire, and auditing. Via our technology partners, we also provide encryption, data masking, and field-level security.

Container and Cloud Deployments

A cloud-first strategy is key to constant innovation and the ability to respond to fast-changing business needs. However, a successful cloud-first strategy must weigh the options of public, private, hybrid, and multi-cloud deployments, while trying to avoid vendor lock-in and unforeseen operational issues.

The Couchbase Data Platform is cloud-native and architected to work on any cloud. Differentiated functionality like auto-sharding, shared-nothing, memory-first architecture, Multi-Dimensional Scaling, cross datacenter replication (XDCR), zone- and region-aware replication, and a cloud-based Sync Gateway make Couchbase uniquely suited for cloud deployments.

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Couchbase Server 6.0.0 Enterprise

Couchbase Server 6.0 Enterprise Edition is a full-featured NoSQL Database available free of charge for unlimited pre-production development and testing, with support from our Couchbase Forums. Built on the most powerful NoSQL technology, Couchbase Server gives you the flexibility to constantly reinvent the customer experience. Experience unmatched agility, flexibility, and unparalleled performance on the easiest platform to manage, all risk-free as you revolutionize and deploy your mission-critical applications. Note: Enterprise and Community editions are largely API compatible, so if you later decide you do not need enterprise-grade features and support, you can deploy on Community Edition.

Couchbase Server 6.0 was released in October 2018. This release brings you the latest in the Couchbase Analytics offering – with this release, start crunching real-time query results using N1QL for Analytics – No ETL required! Eventing and Full-text Search also have significant updates that we know you will enjoy. Read more to learn about the latest new features.

Couchbase Server 6.0.0 Community

Couchbase Server 6.0 Community Edition is the open source version of our non-proprietary data platform. It is supported by the community on Couchbase Forums, and is best suited for non-enterprise developers or non-commercial development where basic availability, performance, tooling, and query is sufficient. The Community Edition is available free of charge for both development and production, but is not subjected to the same rigorous "test, fix, and verify" quality assurance cycle as the Enterprise Edition, and is generally released several months behind Enterprise Edition.

Download Couchbase Mobile

Couchbase Lite 2.1.x Enterprise

Couchbase Lite 2.1.x Enterprise Edition extends the Couchbase Data Platform to the edge with a full-featured embedded database that supports key-value, query, full-text search, eventing, sync, and security – both online and offline. It is available free of charge for unlimited pre-production development and testing, with support from our Couchbase Forums. Experience the unmatched agility, flexibility, and unparalleled performance on the easiest full-stack platform to manage, from the cloud to the edge, all risk-free as you revolutionize and deploy your mission-critical mobile applications. Note: Enterprise and Community editions are largely API compatible, so if you later decide you do not need enterprise-grade features and support, you can deploy on Community Edition.

Couchbase Lite 2.1.2 was released in November 2018 for .NET and Android. Couchbase Lite 2.1.3 was released in December 2018 for Swift and Objective-C.

Couchbase Lite 2.1.x Community

Couchbase Lite 2.1.x Community Edition is the open source version of our non-proprietary embedded database. It is supported by the community on Couchbase Forums, and is best suited for non-enterprise mobile developers or non-commercial development where basic availability, performance, tooling, and query is sufficient. The Community Edition is available free of charge for both development and production, but is not subjected to the same rigorous "test, fix, and verify" quality assurance cycle as the Enterprise Edition and is generally released several months behind Enterprise Edition.

Sync Gateway 2.1.1 Enterprise

Couchbase Sync Gateway 2.1.1 Enterprise Edition provides seamless data synchronization from any cloud to the edge using WebSocket-based replication with fine-grained access control, enterprise-grade security, and elastic scalability. It is available free of charge for unlimited pre-production development and testing, with support from our Couchbase Forums. Experience the unmatched agility, flexibility, and unparalleled performance on the easiest platform to manage, all risk-free as you revolutionize and deploy your mission-critical mobile applications. Note: Enterprise and Community editions are largely API compatible, so if you later decide you do not need enterprise-grade features and support, you can deploy on Community Edition.

Couchbase Sync Gateway 2.1.1 was released in October 2018. Couchbase Sync Gateway 2.1.1 is the first maintenance release in the 2.1.x series and includes important bug fixes.

Sync Gateway 2.1.1 Community

Couchbase Sync Gateway 2.1.1 Community Edition is the open source version of our non-proprietary sync technology. It is supported by the community on Couchbase Forums, and is best suited for non-enterprise mobile developers or non-commercial development where basic availability, performance, tooling, and query is sufficient. The Community Edition is available free of charge for both development and production, but is not subjected to the same rigorous "test, fix, and verify" quality assurance cycle as the Enterprise Edition, and is generally released several months behind Enterprise Edition.

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Sample Projects

1.Couchbase Travel Sample Training App: A step-by-step walkthrough of all the various features of Couchbase 2.0 using a sample travel application. Available for Swift, Java (Android), and C# (UWP, Xamarin).